You know once in a while you do a photoshoot that you really really REALLY liked?

I mean like you go back to review the shots and even think to yourself, “Dang, I’m good!”

Something that made you proud to showcase not one, not two, but really almost every shot that you took…so much so that just weeding out which shots NOT to be included on the DVD was the hardest task?

This was one of those times.

Meet my subjects.

Lena, from Germany.

Nina, from  Germany.

Hao Chu, from Vietnam. AKA Heidi.

I was told that it was Lena and Nina’s birthday present for Heidi. I found out later that it was actually Nina AND Heidi’s birthday. I’m sure they enjoyed their present. These photos are all over their facebook profiles now. I’ve even got compliments from friends just walking around the uni. Anyway, if they’re happy – I’m happy.

The theme of the photoshoot was “Fairytale”. I did a bit of research of how cartoonists draw fairytale pictures like Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc. Okay, actually it was a single picture with all of the above in it with some other “princesses” of which I cannot remember the names. Here is my rendition:

Too posed? I like it.

I should find the cartoon that I was looking at and insert it here…in retrospect I should’ve moved this shot to someplace else. I took the shot here because I liked the backlight on the trees. See that golden, greenish colour….I liked that and was trying to get it blurred enough to become some really nice rounded bokeh. After going through the troubles of posing the shot it would’ve been too troublesome to shift everything to somewhere else. Also, we were loosing light so we had to move.

This next shot was probably one of my faves…not this one exactly, but all the ones taken here I really liked.

“Who wants to be that tree?!”

By the way, it was around this time and the individual shots (the ones where I introduced the subjects) that my Speedlight fell down again. Yup. AGAIN! “Friggin, stupid *#!@#$!!!” Everytime I do a shoot a Speedlight falls. It doesn’t matter how secure I make it it’ll still drop! I even put my SB-600 (the more expensive of the two) on the tripod which is heavier = sturdier. I was taking a shot of one of the girls and was backing up slowly. I backed into the tripod and it slammed into the ground – diffuser first. (I also dropped my SB-600 when I was taking Rick and Michelle’s Wedding) Last time I broke my umbrella, this time I broke the shot shoe feet on the plastic wireless flash receiver – Thanks goodness! I’ve yet to glue it back but I’ll do it before Wednesday (26th May 2010) because I have another photoshoot then.

This next series is AWESOME. Kudos to Steph for thinking of this shot. We literally stopped them as they were walking away to the next spot and got these shots. I got them to swing their heads as I was counting down the shot and got some great hair action!

These were all taken in the Japanese Gardens at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba QLD, but theres not much to show for it, huh? So, I’m gonna throw in this shot just so I compliments the title:

By now everyone was getting tired as it was cold, and sunset had just passed. We set up our last shots for the day and went home. We wanted a shot of them dipping their feet in the water but there just wasn’t enough time.

Total duration of Photoshoot: 120 minutes.

Yes, I was there! It was great! They had a video conference with their Sydney branch and everything! Hillsong Brisbane (hillsongbrisbane.com) was originally Garden City Christian Church which has been officially taken over by the Hillsong Mega-church.

If you plan on visiting, its located at:

16 Rover Street,

Mt Gravatt, QLD,

Australia.

Aaron, Steph, Reshaun and I went for the 2nd 10.30am service. We went early so we could get good seats! Unfortunately, this mean’t my “overview wide shot” didn’t show the real size of the auditorium.

This was from about the 4th or 5th row. Also, photography and videography was STRICTLY PROHIBITED in the auditorium so all my shots were spy shots!

First EVER praise and worship from Hillsong Brisbane (Actually second, it was the 2nd service)

Brian Houston, Hillsong Church Senior Pastor.

Reuben Morgan, lead singer/guitarist.

Joel A’Bell,  Executive Pastor.

This was one of the backup singers during praise and worship. What’s interesting is his resemblance with a friend of mine, Will. This is Will:

Funny right? …maybe not to you…

First up here are some of the more “unique” Easterfest-goers…

The Power Rangers made an appearance with Spiderman…haha…

Here are some campers…recognize anyone?

Next we have the shots from the church service…there were two services but I’m just gonna combine them coz I can’t remember which is which (too lazy to check exif info eiher)

Evan Shelton, our church’s music director…wonderful singer as well!

Ps. Peter Pelicaan, he once prophecized over me…very gifted man of God. Also, he’s the chaplain of Christian Outreach College (COC), Toowoomba.

This is Isaac Moody, CEO of Easterfest. He’s been running it since it started. Nice guy! That’s his daughter during the service…

Next up were the games at the Red Frogs Colleseum. They had stuff from “So you think you can dance” and some games…the games were cool!

This is one I particularly liked. Basically, everyone holds hands in a huge circle…then, a chair is thrown in the middle. The objective is to get everyone else to touch the chair without touching it yourself. If you break the chain then the two people who let go their hands are out. If you touch the chair you’re out. As there’s less and less people more chairs are thrown in the middle. Last one wins!

one of the two hosts…

The Red Frogs Colleseum

There was also some more BMX stunts but I prefer the shots from the first day a lot more…anyway, here are 2 shots of the day that I like:

Ok next is simply a MUST-MENTION. I mean when I saw this guy I was amazed! If you look closely at his fingers you;d notice they’re sort of twisted and tangled…sort of like a disability…but his passion for Christ is unbelievable! respect!

Lead singer of Selaphonic

Next is the Paul Coleman Trio secret show that was at the Epicentre

…and last but not least, before the night was out, I shot Fatis Valor…they were an hour late and I was waiting for them to come on so I missed out on a lot of good shows…oh well…

…and that is the end of the Easterfestseries…at least for this year.

Right now I think I’m the only photographer who hasn’t already submitted their photos…and I’ve only just finished going through day 2!

…so without further ado, lets get on with it shall we:

1) New Empire

2) Austoville

3) Lucy Hannah

4) Into the Ocean

5) Naturally 7 (although only 6 of them were present)

6) Paul Coleman Trio

7) NewWorldSon

enjoy!

1) New Empire

2) Austoville

3) Lucy Hannah

4) Into the Ocean

5) Naturally 7 (although only 6 of them were present)

6) Paul Coleman Trio

7) NewWorldSon

Got church in 6hrs! See ya!

For those of you who don’t know, Urqhart Castle is situated along Loch Ness, the famous lake which is home to the Loch Ness Monster.

Linzhi and I went to 1 tourist destination while I was in Scotland…as you can imagine, we went to see the Loch Ness. Unfortunately, it was pretty cold that day and Nessie didn’t make an appearance. However, we made the most of it and got some good shots throughout the day.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Linzhi is better than me at portraits.

Its annoying…but its true…take a look at the shots below (by the way, these following shots are straight from camera only threw in the border):

I was trying to re-enact the Nicholas Cage pose in National Treasure. Credit to Linzhi for taking the photo.

Of course, it could simply be the striking self pose made by yours truly…or more likely the camera recognized that it was in the presence of pure awesomeness. In any case, its a lot better than mine which is below:

Then again, Linzhi didn’t go all the way to the top where the composition is at its most awesome perspective. Yeah, I guess I could argue until the cows come home but at the end of the day the result shows.

Dissapointed?

yes.

Sorry?

no.

Why?

…because there are other areas where I ooze awesomeness and Linzhi is hopeless…behold Linzhi’s attempt to take a picture of me jumping in mid-air (once again straight from camera):

Epic fail. If I took more photos at the spot above I’d have made at least one nice one as well!

I, on the other hand took a single shot:

Behold, awesomeness requires no post processing whatsoever!

Ok, enough about that, we’ll leave our sibling rivalry to another post (and by the way I’m on the path the pure awesome portraiture! What’s with me and awesomeness today?! …must be craving my unwatched How I Met Your Mother episodes…which by the way if you readers have yet to see please start. Its LEGENDARY!

Ok, moving onto the purpose of this post – Loch Ness.

Behold Urqhart Castle. Once a marvellous inpenetrable stronghold, now a ruin of torn down stones and rubble.

It does however overlook the Loch Ness. The lake by the way, is huge! Its like a small ocean because it just spans til forever…it goes all the way to North England…back in the day the Engligh and Scots were enemies…and so the English regularly came up the river to attack the Scots via the lake.

The Castle itself was beautiful. Actually the post although it says Loch Ness and Urqhart Castle is more about me and Linzhi taking pictures of whatever!

This is Linzhi’s proud as heck shot using the wide angle lens after my lecture on how difficult it is to compose a shot at 10mm (15mm Full Frame equiv.)

An old school slingshot that was used to defend the castle.

After much ado, Linzhi finally nailed a shot of me in mid air!

Linzhi shadow play.

Space Conscious Stairs.

Oh, this next pic is cool…as we were exploring the castle I saw a teeny tiny hole in the wall…it looked like this:

Pinhole photography? READ THE POST TO FIND OUT!

So, I slapped on my wide angle lens and poked it out of the hole at the side of the castle risking scratching the lens. I took another shot and what came out amazed me. I threw on the Cokin P 0.6 soft edge Grad ND filter and took a couple of shots to get the composition I wanted.

What resulted is a beautiful view of Loch Ness.

Behold, the Famous Loch Ness.

On our way out there was a rather interesting wall which had what I assume to be farewell in manu languages…my assumption is based on the “Selamat Jalan” that was written…

Selamat Jalan

We finished our little exploration day early and didn’t want to wait for the bus so we walked half an hour back to Drumnadochit Village…along the way we saw a sign with black and white arrow points. I told Linzhi to stick her head to the point so it looked as if it was pointing to her head! …as we were taking the picture a car drove by and the occupants must’ve been thinking what Asian weirdos we were…

It was so funny at the time we couldn’t stop laughing about it!

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/03/24/loch-ness-urqhart-castle-inverness-scotland/feed/ 5 http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/03/15/marken-north-holland-what-i-did-on-cny-eve/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/03/15/marken-north-holland-what-i-did-on-cny-eve/#comments Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:35:53 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=376

On Chinese New Year Eve my family and I went on a road trip to Marken, North Holland. Its a little plot of land surrounded by water and is almost an island if it wasnt for the piece of land that stretches all the way out to the mainland which is how motor vehicles access the place.

As asians we always have to make numerous pit stops before we reach our destination. These are some of the shots that were taken along the way…

Mummy obviously enjoying herself…

This is really one of the best places to put in a windmill…its SUPER windy!

On the left is the road, right is the bicycle path.

When we finally arrived we were greeted with beautiful seascapes, vintage houses and some very cozy restaurant/cafes…

Of course no dutch tourist spot is complete without a bar serving its legendary beer!

Mum and Dad

As you can imagine it didn’t take us very long to get lost…

This is cool! Jiaxen noticed this dude riding on a bike and so I quickly burst off a few shots in his direction…This is the only one I could salvage. What was so interesting you might ask? …he’s wearing CLOGS! -you know, those wooden shoes! They actually still wear them! (thats why the watermark had to be moved away from blocking it).

I noticed these clothes hanging outside one of the houses. I think this adequately represents their lifestyle and culture. Also, it was a B&W scene just asking to be taken…

I think I’m getting better at seeing things in black and white…Before I would never “see” the world in B&W but I’m slowly noticing some things which is wonderful! I have a great appreciation for black and white photographers because its one of the two main areas of photography that I feel I could really push the envelope with if I just practice a little more – the other one is portraiture.

Mummy and the lil guy! …in front of a green house!

As you can clearly see we had to ZIP UP coz its was freezing! …so we decided to go to a nearby cafe to warm up and eat some POFFERTJES!!! Poffertjes (pronounced [pɔfəɹcəs]) is a dutch pancake thats delicious! Unfortunately I’m not one of those who like to take pictures of my food…perhaps I should start? I did however take a portrait of my mum…

Mummy enjoying her coffee…

My favourite shot of the day is below…just before we went into the cafe we headed out to the coastline where the wind is strongest! I used a Hitech 0.6 soft edge graduated neutral density filter to get this shot…Should’ve used the Tian Ya 0.9 one but was too lazy once I zipped up my bag.

Here it is:

I went with the square framing not because I liked it but because of the cars on the upper left hand side which distracted from the composition. Thats the annoying thing about ultra wide angle lenses!

After that we headed home because we had a Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner that we had to attend…I took just two group shots of the two tables which are below. (Sorry I can’t remember all the names so I just didn’t bother)

women and childrens table.

Men’s table. I was on this table. I’m a man. – true story

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/03/15/marken-north-holland-what-i-did-on-cny-eve/feed/ 0 http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/02/13/singapore/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/02/13/singapore/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:08:14 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=294

Captains Log

Day 10: 22nd December 2008.

Still in Kuala Lumpur. Just arrived back from Cambo in one piece. This is where we split. Stephanie left to Kelantan, Pastor Yew Meng + family stayed in Kuala Lumpur for a while. Aaron came to the airport and we had the best 15 mins ever! Jason, Will, Patrick, Seng Yee and Andrea stayed in KL a couple days too. Ben, Edna, and myself continued onto Singapore. In the airport we met a lovely lady, Mrs Kate Cheah.

Credit Ben for taking the picture

We later found out that Mrs. Cheah was the owner of Polar Puffs and Cakes, Singapore. She also does missionaries to prisons in Thailand. She details this in her book Sweet Memories Sweet Success.

I sat across the aisle from her as she was flying back to Singapore after her attending her son’s wedding in Malaysia. We arrived in Singapore at night and Edna had plans to meet up with her friends for their annual new year party. Just a couple of them who are best friends. I only took one photo the whole night. This is it.

As you can probably tell it was a costume party. You can see Edna in the pink shirt...she didnt dress up coz we just got out of the plane and came straight.

No, this is NOT how they normally dress. They changed back into “normal” clothes almost right after the shot. I did enjoy myself though…particularly the bed…as we’d been sleeping on hard mattresses in Cambodia…and this particular place was a 5 star service apartment.

Day 11: 23rd December 2008

We spent the day roaming around Singapore, visiting the Merlion among other things.

I like the lines in this shot.

Me and the Merlion. Credit to Ben for taking the picture.

Got these ideas from Anderson

Ben loves Singapore.

this guy looked funny as he was trying to take a picture...I wonder how many of these there are of me?

Ok ok, heres a proper picture of the Merlion.

from the Merlion, you can see bunches of these spherical bouy-like things floating in the water...any idea what they are?

There were many cranes right opposite the lake/big pond thingie which faces the Merlion.

Eye of Singapore...? thats what they call it in every other city!

That night, we decided to go to the Singapore Night Safari. Its basically an extension of the Singapore Zoo thats only open at dusk til midnight. Its an amazing experience viewing all the nocturnal animals. By the way, it really pushes your camera (whatever you have) to the limits. I was shooting at HI 1.0 (ISO3200 equiv.) on my Nikon D80 wide open on my 50mm f/1.8.

The Night Safari, Singapore.

The otters demonstrate the importance of recycling garbage as these items can suffocate such animals and kill them.

Big snake

Tribal dance

They also breath fire...

Of course there were animals too...lions...

A babirusa. (direct translation means Pig Deer)

cant remember the name but its the largest rodents on earth.

Perhaps the coolest thing is in fact the toilets. At first glance its just a normal looking toilet...beautifully designed, elegant, and posh.

...but upon further inspection, you'll notice the outer wall is missing! Its actually really cool! without the flash you wouldn't notice the wall outside. This is the less packed one. At the main entrance theres a better one with fake perpetual rain that really enhances the ambience.

Even the table surfaces match the theme...

After roaming around the entire park we decided to relax by soaking our feet in fish infested waters. Its called Nibbles and basically you stick your feet into the water and the fishes eat away the dirt…perhaps the pictures will tell a better story…

Nibbles, Once bitten, Twice Shine.

Tickles!

Finally after an awesome but exhausting day we were waiting for the last bus...look at Bens black shoes...so gay right? who agrees?

Day 12: 24th December 2008

New Years Eve.

-and what am I doing? …travelling…travelling half way round the world to London to be exact.

Good news is I got to sit on the A380 and it is DEFINITELY WORTH THE HYPE!

Singapore Airlines SQ318 Airbus A380 Cabin.

This is my seat. I started off with a single pillow and blanket. There were so few people on the plane that by the time I arrived I had easily 12+ pillows. This is about half way through.

I love it that they actually decorate the cabin…you can see the chrismas deco hanging on the cabin walls.

BY THE WAY!!! I noticed my pictures in all the previous post were all soft and blurry…I thought it was because of my theme but I realised I was just resizing them too small and Wordpress had to stretch the pictures…heres an example:

Before.

After.

…and another example…

Before.

After.

If you look closely the difference is actually quite obvious…another thing, I realize a photographers blog is supposed to be where they upload their “GOOD” shots where as I’m using it to upload my “CRAP SHOTS” and happy snaps with flickr still being the main showcase on the internet…so after I finish this series of posts from my summer vacation I’ll change it around and use my blog onto for good pictures. I will probably change the theme as well to suit the motive…until then, please don’t judge my skills from this blog…cheers!

In case some of you don’t know, an ambigram is a graphical figure that spells out one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also in another direction or orientation (definition from Wikipedia). In other words, you can turn the word upside down and it will still spell the same thing…like the ones you’ll see in that new movie “Angels and Demons”.

I tried to create an ambigram logo of my name. I got the basic design before church finished but the hard part came when it came to digitizing it. Here is the original draft:

Mr. blurrycam strikes again. Apologies for the crap picture. Its straight from the iPhones crappy camera.

Anyway, as I was saying, the hard part is digitizing it. You see I’ve been trying to figure out how to use the pen tool found in Adobe’s Photoshop for several months…about 6 months to be exact. The beauty of the pen tool is that it exists in a vector scale format. That means that unlike pictures which you zoom in the the picture gets pixelated and becomes worse and worse, a vector formatted image can be blow up as big a possible while retaining the original clarity and sharpness.

…and now a word to all the graphic designers out there: I know what you’re thinking. Screw Illustrator. If I wanted to learnt illustrator I would…but I’m a photographer. I loooooooooooove photoshop!

So for the past few months I’ve been trying to use the pen tool but end up not going anywhere. This “project” really helped jump start me in learning the basics of the pen tool…so I can now draw custom shapes that look pretty and are vector formatted.

After 2 days (yes – 2 days!) of working on my logo I finally completed one that mildly satisfies. By 2 days I actually mean 2 nights as I was only on it from like midnight to the wee hours of morning which is sleepy time for mua. The first day I completed it and that was version 1. The next day I made it less “edgy” and more “curvy” which took about the same amount of time to make the whole thing in the first place. That was version 2. The curves no longer went with the underline and so I played around with it and I noew present to you version 2.1 of my ambigram logo:

It reads "Jiaren" this way as well as upside-down.

…and now for the dissapointing part:

Later on I was googling ambigram and came across an ambigram creator. This intrigued me and so I threw in my name to see what would come out…much to my surprise the created ambigram which only took a couple of seconds to recreate looked SO MUCH BETTER THAN MINE!!! I was a little bit annoyed but the experience taught me a lot.

Comments and/or critique anyone? (besides the obvious need to refine it).

I’m late again (whats new eh?) and have decided to stop apologizing everytime it takes me so long to update…coz its only gonna make it worse, lol..

I’ve been busy and have been extremely enjoying this holiday…unfortunately, my brother went back to school today and my sister went back to Scotland so I’ve got plenty of time now…btw, this is going to be a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong post.

“why?”

“…well, because I have to update on everything that happened in December so I can hurry up and start on this new year…this post is playing catch up.”

The Queen Mary Falls will be the main thingie but I’ll also throw in some pictures of our pre-christmas party (long overdue) and whatever I find in my December folder.

Queen Mary Falls

Ok, so Queen Mary Falls is located in South East Queensland – very very close to the border between QLD and NSW. The story goes something like this:

Queen Mary of England herself rode a horse through the waterfalls and loved the place. This was long ago when she was still a child. Well…either it was her or Queen Elizabeth but its called Queen Mary Falls so I guess the former would be correct. I’m about 10% sure.

I actually went twice. The first was to scout the place out as all good photogs do. The second was to pinpoint the good spots. (By first I meant my friendship parent took me there and by second, I meant I told my friends about it ad ended up planning another trip there!

Didn’t take many pics the first time as there were just the three of us: Me, Steph, and Mark (friednship parent). The upside is that I can some good pictures with steph!

Yes, I’ve cut my hair since then…

Oh, one thing cool about the first trip was that I got to test out my ND and ND grad filters…but me being me I forgot to bring my tripod AND filter holder that day!. Darn. For those of you who don’t know (which I’m guessing are most of you) an ND is a Neutral Density filter. Basically its like sunglasses for your camera so you can take slower shots in broad daylight. A graduated ND filter is the same thing but only the top half is darkened…anyway, you get this sort of effect:

You can see my finger holding the filter on the bottom right hand corner there! Anyway, the second time around the clouds weren’t as beautiful but I brought my tripod so got some nice shots.

Now I’m gonna stop blabbering and throw a bunch of photos so I can get to the next topic. The following pictures were taken on the second trip:

Perhaps this is a good time to explain that the Queen Mary Falls National Park is a nature reserve that consists of three main waterfalls and small streams. The main one is of course Queen Mary Falls followed by Brown Falls and the smallest one being Daggs Falls.

The walk to Daggs falls is amazing. Stop and appreciate Gods work.

…and its 1am…forget it, I’m done for the night…Will continue later…below is a gallery of the shots above and more. 91 pics altogether. Click for a 640×480 picture and feel free to request the pics u want forwarded to you. See ya soon!

Anyway, here are the 6 which are my favourite…(not including the one right at the bottom of the previous post which I love!)

had to do a bit to get that background under control...this was one of the first shots and I was still adjusting my exposure accordingly...

was trying to do the miniature model thingie but not high up enough so just went with it to get this semi-lomo effect...

I have a lot more but I need to get this subject out of the way for the next series:

BIG HEAD DAY!

Big head day is when someone decides we’re gonna give a friend a birthday card with all our pictures on it…so I suggested that we use the distortion from the wide angle lens to make big heads! …so here they are!

Kodomo

Will

Patrick

Steph

Sabrina

Wilson

Ben

Jiaren

Edna

Elsey

Ok! I’m glad I got that off my chest…theres a Christmas party but nothing “photography” about it…except the fact that people are wearing funky hats…it was a hybrid  pre-christmas party / Edna’s birthday…(we seem to celebrate things extremely early…remember this is late November…Christmas is end of December and Edna’s bday is 15th December…other than that I have some pretty waterfall pictures I’d like to share…so I say we skip the christmas party…

what say you?